my snarky thought was "if you don't have a 4-year degree, can you honestly call a list of the places you've worked a resume?"

This reminds me of a recent NPR story I heard about a company that sells web-based testing of potential job applicants to other companies. They do a lot of tracking of previous test-takers career success/progress in order to measure how well their test scores predict successful outcomes, and one of the things they found is that having a 4-year degree in computer science has nothing to do with whether or not somebody is a good programmer. So that was 6 years and a lot of money wasted (yeah, I know, I had a lot of formative experiences, met interesting people, yada yada - I could have gotten similar experiences working on ocean-going cargo ships, or being in the military, etc.) Sometimes I think having a college degree is basically just a union membership where you pay all the dues up front.

(The article also said that they found that Chrome and Firefox users tended to be better employees than IE or Safari users, and that totally tracks with my experience. However, they don't actually share that information about job applicants because using it to make a hiring decision would be "discriminatory".)

I wonder if the pattern applies to other disciplines. Current the US seems hell-bent on teaching STEM to everybody, believing it to be cure for all our economic ills. Leaving aside the issue of whether or not an economy made up primarily of STEM geniuses would be functional, if some people cannot be taught STEM even if they are highly motivated...cue the South Park ski instructor meme.

I seriously believe some people are naturally better at programming than others (just as some people have a talent for painting or playing the piano), and there may be neuerophysical reasons for that, but I don't think that means that programming cannot be taught. I suspect that given enough time, and sufficient motivation, anyone could become a good programmer.

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